China's Pursuit of Semiconductor Independence

Please join us for a public event on U.S. policy responses to China's pursuit of an independent domestic semiconductor industry on February 28, 2019 from 12:15 pm - 2:00 pm at the CSIS headquarters.

Semiconductors and microelectronics are the backbone of the digital economy and closely linked to national security. Recognizing this, China intends to gain semiconductor independence through espionage and immense investments, but it lags behind the U.S. If China achieves a dominant position in semiconductors it will likely use it for intelligence, military, commercial, and political advantage. At this event, we will discuss potential policy responses the U.S. can take to strengthen the position of American semiconductor companies and prevent the potential damaging effects of China's behavior.

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[dant]

American arrogance and imperialist nature have no boundaries. Bottom line for China and other nations need to be self-sufficient in all areas possible.

[obsidianstatue]

with moore's law bottlenecking there's a great potential for Chinese semiconductor foundries to catch up.
Made in China 2025 is simply a legitimate plan for China to move up the economic value chain, so it's incredibly arrogant for them to oppose it as a disruptor simply because the Chinese are not willing to stay a low value added factory. China moving up the value chain will also create a massive middle class consumers that will in return consume more.


btw don't you find it hypocritical for them to criticize China's government led innovation initiatives, then in their closing statements urge the US government to put more into state subsidized innovation?

[yfzhangphonn]

If US doesn't ban ZTE, Chinese will never be awake for low level researches.

[ecologyrocks]

USA: China, don't steal!
China: OK, I innovate, 5g to start with.
USA: China, don't innovate!
China: OK, I develop the industry that you already have, like the semi-conductor.
USA: China, don't develop!
China: should I just stop existing?
USA: yeah, I finally can sleep tight tonight.

[davidjacobson]

This discussion misses most of the major logic behind China's effort in semiconductors. The emergence of the semiconductor industry was largely driven by the American Pentagon's spending on defense contractors, national laboratories, and funding of the American academic world. There is nothing new about government spending on objectives that are central to national security. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all have already acquired an high level of competence on semiconductor design and fabrication. The idea that there is some fundamental factor that will forever keep the 1.3 billion people of China dependant on some American supremacists for their semiconductors is absurd. More advances in semiconductor technology are not the bottleneck for most effective applications of computers. The United States has shown itself to be the global aggressor and prone to threaten any nation that refuses to accept American dominance with economic warfare. The priority for the Chinese is to get to a place where the United States Senate cannot hope to destroy a Chinese company like ZTE by refusing to sell them commercial semiconductor products. Most likely China will eventually achieve the capability to be a top tier competitor in semiconductor design and manufacturing. But, its major need is to eliminate its dependence on the United States for semiconductor products that are good enough to keep its computer dependent services running and to provide the functional products its society depends on. Its success at achieving that level should help reduce the potential for suicidal American supremacists to try to divide the world into the puppets who accept American dominance and those who resist.

[szakacsfulop]

China has a right to have its own
Industry.
Americans always think that they have a god given right to dominate.
The essence of this discussion
is that America wants the Chinese market without giving anything in return.
The fundamental issue is the crazy
way Americans see the world.
Counties want to be able to supply
their own markets with their own products (self-reliancy) and they also want to become leaders in certain areas. America wants all countries
to be consumers of American
products. When America doesn 't
Get what (the market share) it wants it then gets nasty with sanctions and threats and cries foul.

[nobufrancis]

These people think that the USA has the divine right to lead in high technology.

[tomchen]

This is so when China is advancing is a USA is attacking other countries is considered 😂

Huawei said why China steals from you that you don, t have hahahaha Americunt has no answers.

[liuyangyang]

The Chinese government is focusing on the full supply chain independence, from design to manufacture, from software to material, from equipment to process. This will be achieved in the next decade.

[jimkuan]

The chip supply cut to ZTE is catastrophic for US semi conductor industry. It WAS UNDERSTOOD that China will not pursuit chip development. In fact Chinese government systematically stifle the chip development in China. And it allows US chip companies to generate over $200 Billion per year in export to China. That is actually MORE than the oil import for China. In another way, China accepted that US will dominate the high end chip market. But after ZTE, the game has changed. It becomes life or death situation for China. And as a collective (yes Chinese mind is quite collective), they immediately shift to hyper gear for chip development.

Looking back 10 years later, you might realize this is actually the TURNING POINT that China started overtaking US in chip development. Trump administration made a HUGE MISTAKE.

[GMATveteran]

What oversight mechanisms are the US prepared to accept so as to prevent the US government from arbitrarily cutting off supply in another ZTE-like episode? How can the US expect the PRC to simply give up its quest for semiconductor independence when the US can simply arbitrarily cut off supply to the PRC whenever the latter sells to a customer that Americans dislike? As long as the Americans continue to maintain & exercise this level of hegemonic power, it is bad for China & bad for the world to simply accept US semiconductor dominance - one that should rightfully be broken by any means necessary.

[audnu]

LOL the title of this video should be:

*We screwed them by using our semiconductor dominance, they want to protect themselves from being screwed by us again, how dare them! But no worries they will fail because we are a superior race.*

[ibrahimseck]

The arrogance on this panel is just incredible !

[pardeeptandon]

China produces 4X STEM graduates and 2X postgraduates then America does. As far as there Quality is concerned you have to visit any top STEM university in America, Asians beat there American classmates hands down.

[vencheock]

Science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) graduates have become a vital factor in global prosperity and unsurprisingly, China is leading the way. The World Economic Forum reported that China had 4.7 million recent STEM graduates in 2016. India, another academic powerhouse, had 2.6 million new STEM graduates last year while the U.S. had 568, 000.

[hayden]

Just embrace the competition and say, "cool, game on". The reason why Amazon is the leader in e-commerce is mainly because they focused on their customers, not their competitors. Stop worrying about how well others are doing or not doing. Worry about yourself doing the best.

[lovesimpleton]

It's a little ironic too that both the CEO of AMD and Nvidia today are Chinese descent.

[willengel]

facts: US can bar export anything of dual use to china. china will ultimately comes up with its own. simple math: china has more engineers than any other countries.

there are several semiconductor companies in china. Chinese tech companies will pay closer attention to them after ZTE. btw ZTE is telecom co, it's not a chip company. US will lose ZTE down the road.

[sophiezhou]

“It’s a hard industry for them to do “ Time will tell!